THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Photograph by Orren R. Louden
ARTISTS WORK ALONG THE STREET AT WOODSTOCK
This picturesque village in the heart of the Rip Van Winkle country in the Catskills is the
Provincetown of the State. Palenville, where the sharp-tongued spouse of Rip resided, and the
mountain where he slept are only a few miles away (see text, page 528).
When it creeps beside the stately new Barge
Canal, it looks like a ghost of the long ago.
By the time the railroads were ready to
take over its burden, it had paid for itself
in tolls. It had found, in the words of
Washington, the Western settlers standing
on a pivot, where even the touch of a
feather would incline them any way; and
it had inclined them to trade with New
York.
EMPIRE OF PEOPLE, WEALTH, SCENERY
Gone is the glory of Erie Canal. The
elite, who once traveled through the State
atop its leisurely moving barges, now roll
at high speed in modern motorcars on
superhighways, rush along on world-famed
express trains, or fly like birds along the
sky paths, seldom giving it either glance
or thought.
But New York, both the State and
the city, whatever their unrivaled position,
will ever owe homage for their primacy
to De Witt Clinton and that symbolic
ditch.
Never has a State possessed a clearer
title to its sobriquet than the land of the
Hudson, the Mohawk, and the Genesee
holds to its name of Empire State.
Whether measured by the hosts of its
people, by the magnitude of its wealth, by
the extent of its industry, by the splendor
and variety of its scenery, or by the mag
nificence of its program for the public weal,
New York inspiringly lives up to that title.
With more than twelve and a half million
people, it is indeed an empire, outranking
Canada by a margin of two million and
coming close to doubling Austria. It has
two people for every one on the entire Con
tinent of Australia and three for every two
in the Union of South Africa.
With thirty-seven billion dollars of
wealth, it stands ahead of half of the nations
of the earth. Even the whole United States,
as recently as 1870, could not match that
figure.
Most assuredly in the variety and splen
dor of its scenery it is an empire. After
rambling throughout the entire State-grid
ironing Long Island; checkerboarding West
chester County; zigzagging up the Hudson
and down the Champlain country; criss
crossing the Adirondacks and Catskills;
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